Every year, professor of antiquities Jack Hawthorne looks forward to the winter break as a time to hide away from his responsibilities. Even if just for a week or two. But this year, his plans are derailed when he’s offered almost a blank check from a man chasing a rumor.

Billionaire Gordon Reese thinks he knows where the bones of the prophet Elisha are, bones that in the Old Testament brought the dead back to life. A born skeptic, Jack doesn’t think much of the assignment but he could use the money, so he takes the first step on a chase for the legendary bones that will take him to the very ends of the earth. But he’s not alone. Joined with a fiery colleague, Esperanza Habilla, they soon discover clues to a shadowy organization whose long-held secrets have been protected . . . at all costs. As their lives are threatened again and again, the real race is to uncover the truth before those chasing them hunt them down.

Every spring, Little Leaguers across the country mimic his stance and squabble over the right to wear his number, 2, the next number to be retired by the world’s most famous ball team. Derek Jeter is their hero. He walks in the footsteps of Ruth, Gehrig, DiMaggio, and Mantle, and someday his shadow will loom just as large. Yet he has never been the best player in baseball. In fact, he hasn’t always been the best player on his team. But his intangible grace and Jordanesque ability to play big in the biggest of postseason moments make him the face of the modern Yankee dynasty, and of America’s game.

In The Captain, best-selling author Ian O’Connor draws on extensive reporting and unique access to Jeter that has spanned some fifteen years to reveal how a biracial kid from Michigan became New York’s most beloved sports figure and the enduring symbol of the steroid-free athlete. O’Connor takes us behind the scenes of a legendary baseball life and career, from Jeter’s early struggles in the minor leagues, when homesickness and errors in the field threatened a stillborn career, to his heady days as a Yankee superstar and prince of the city who squired some of the world’s most beautiful women, to his tense battles with former best friend A-Rod. We also witness Jeter struggling to come to terms with his declining skills and the declining favor of the only organization he ever wanted to play for, leading to a contentious contract negotiation with the Yankees that left people wondering if Jeter might end his career in a uniform without pinstripes.

Derek Jeter’s march toward the Hall of Fame has been dignified and certain, but behind that leadership and hero’s grace there are hidden struggles and complexities that have never been explored, until now. As Jeter closes in on 3,000 hits, a number no Yankee has ever touched, The Captain offers an incisive, exhilarating, and revealing new look at one of the game’s greatest players in the gloaming of his career.

When Tristan finds an amulet, he has no idea how much his life is about to change. When his amulet awakens the evil of another amulet, long thought lost, it is all of Ranaria that hangs on the brink. The black crystal has stirred.

There are those who seek its power and there are those who seek its destruction. There are also those who know its secrets.

Even with dragons on his side, is there enough time for Tristan and his companions to stop that which has been unleashed?

With many twists and turns, a story unfolds that will keep you guessing until the very end. Expect the unexpected.

When the unthinkable happens, and all the magic in the world is not enough, what do you do? Can hope truly be lost?

No one in Ranaria believed it could happen – until it did. When Tristan and Thoral begin having strange dreams about their own dragons attacking, it is only the beginning of things they never imagined.

E.R. Percy’s whiskey making days are turned upside down by the sudden appearance of a giant naked man, an unsavory job offer from a drug dealer, and a sultry local girl hell-bent on making it as difficult as possible for him to keep his vows to his wife. He wants nothing more than to sell his illegal wares and be left alone. Unfortunately, the whiskey man is about to come to terms with the only way for that to happen: the bad way out.

The Screaming Eagles of the 101st Airborne have been in combat against the elusive Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army for nearly seven years. In his memoir, author John G. Roberts tells the story of the 2nd Battalion 502nd Infantry Regiment, the “Widow Makers” of the 101st Airborne Divisions’ 1st Brigade. Written in the often crude language of the combat infantryman, Roberts describes what it was like to confront the enemy during close combat in the triple-canopied jungles of the I Corps Tactical Zone, west of the Song Bo River and in the infamous A Shau Valley. As part of Operation Texas Star, the 502nd Infantry (the “O-Deuce”) lost 30 men killed and over 200 wounded in a month-long battle against the 29th NVA Regiment during April and May, 1970

JUNGLE COMBAT SEEN THRU THE EYES OF A YOUNG SHAKE-N-BAKE SERGEANT

Roberts relates the shock and grief he and others in his platoon felt when his 11-man squad lost 3 men killed and five wounded in about an hour of combat. The firefights around Hill 714, Hill 882 and the 4-month Battle of Firebase Ripcord received very little attention in the media. The press was focused on the April invasion of Cambodia and the May student shootings by the Ohio National Guard at Kent State University. The author, like many Vietnam War combat veterans, carried the symptoms of PTSD with him when he returned home. The author is very open about describing his 35-year battle with alcohol and PTSD. With help from his family and support from the medical professionals at Veterans Affairs, he has worked out a truce with the demons of PTSD and now lives a quiet life in Southern California.

JOIN THE O-DEUCE DURING OPERATION TEXAS STAR

When you read Mighty Men of Valor – With Charley Company on Hill 714: Vietnam, 1970, you have the chance to experience life (and death) as an combat infantryman during some of the last big American-led battles of the Vietnam War as only someone who was there can describe them.

Twelve-year-old BFF’s Ginnie and Tillie, want to be sisters. Tillie’s divorced mom plus Ginnie’s widowed dad could equal a lifetime of round-the-clock girl talk and slumber parties. Too bad Dad vowed to never marry again. Ginnie and Tillie form a secret club. They come up with the perfect mission to change his mind: ‘Operation Secret Sisters’.

Before long, Tillie seems happier about gaining a dad than a sister. Ginnie suspects Tillie has turned ‘Operation Secret Sisters’ into a scam called ‘Operation Steal My Dad.’Things get more complicated when Ginnie stumbles across her real mom’s hidden journals. Ginnie can finally get to know the mother she doesn’t remember and Dad doesn’t talk about.

When Dad discovers she has the journals, he takes them away. Ginnie needs to figure out what the big mystery is before her relationship with her father and her best friend are ruined forever.